The ‘Wicked’ Movie Gets an Official Release Date

The Wizard of Oz gave us Wicked. And now Wicked is giving us ... Wicked. Except this one is a movie, rather than a Broadway show.

Technically it is a movie based on the Broadway show (itself based on a 1995 novel by Gregory Maguire), which has been running very successfully at the Gershwin Theatre since 2003. Though in development for a number of years, Universal has now announced the film has an official release date: December 22, 2021.

The film’s official synopsis, from the press release:

So much happened before Dorothy dropped in. WICKED, feature-film adaptation of the musical phenomenon seen by more than 50 million fans around the world, arrives in theaters for the 2021 holiday season. The unforgettable characters and gravity-defying songs of the beloved hit The New York Times called “the defining musical of the decade” comes to the big screen as the untold story of the Witches of Oz becomes the movie event that will change audiences for good.

The director of the Wicked movie is still Stephen Daldry, who’s been attached to the project for a number of years. Daldry has experience in both film and theater; he directed the movie and the Broadway musical of Billy Elliot, for example. Assuming the film matches the scope and size of the Broadway version, Wicked would be his biggest movie to date by a pretty hefty margin.

No casting was announced with the news, so let the speculation about those two key leads begin.